Pages

Sunday, October 26, 2014

The Boy Who Trapped The Witch Using Poutine

This did not happen once upon a time.
It was last Friday, in the hours when it becomes Saturday and kids
can stay up later huddled under their bed covers reading books on
their ipads and sometimes proper books as well that smell of mould
and dead trees. Robert is huddled up under covers reading fanfiction
his mother would have been horrified to know existed and his father
probably read in secret, which says little about them at all but
everything that will be told in this story.

Robert is wide awake in the way of
children, listening to the movements of shadows and the deep creaking
of floorboards. He is half-convinced his parents bought the old house
just to give him nightmares, because of some cruel thing he’d done
as a child or might one day do as a teenager. He tells himself he is
not afraid, but he knows the telling is a lie. It is part of what
keeps him up under artificial light, the rest is a waiting.

He has a missing tooth, and he is
waiting for the tooth fairy. To see her and not to capture her, not
even as an image on his phone, which to some would suggest Robert
is a good boy and others that he has a dearth of imagination that
would be quite hideous to behold. The truth is neither as simple as
the extremes make it out to be. He is waiting, and not sure what he
will do until he does it.

There is a creaking of the old window,
a rattling of glass in a wood frame that lets in cold air every night
despite his fathers attempts to caulk it. Robert doesn’t mind the
cold that much and is wondering how hard the wind is blowing when he
hears the soft creak of wood rising up and footsteps softer than a
cats alighting on the ground. He does not move under the bed, because
part of him is pretty sure that tooth fairies fly, but the footsteps
come closer until he can’t pretend they’re not real.

He pokes his head up from under the
covers and finds a witch standing over him. She is obviously a witch,
dressed entirely in black from head to foot, with a face marked with
acne rather than true warts but Robert is not surprised at that: real
witches, he figures, are probably good at hiding that they are
witches.

“Hello,” he says, and the witch
goes still.

“Hello,” she says finally, and her
voice sounds utterly ordinary, like an older sister might, but Robert
is not fooled at all: older girls tend to hide behind nice words in
his experience, and then tear you apart without throwing a single
punch.

“You’re not the tooth fairy: is she
ill?”

“I don’t believe so,” the witch
says slowly.

“Then why,” he presses, in the way
that makes his teachers twitch, “is a witch here instead?”

The witch pauses, and for the first
time Robert notices she had a black bag as if she was also filling in
for Santa even though Christmas is not for another 41 days. “You
think I am a witch.”

“I’m not stupid,” Robert says,
wisely turning off his ipad and keeping it hidden under the folds of
his covers. He doesn’t think a witch would steal it, but he’s
pretty sure his dad wouldn’t get him another even if it was a witch
that stole it, because adults are always unfair.

“I imagine not,” the witch says,
and hides her black bag under her clothing.

Robert decides not to ask about it,
since witches do terrible things in stories and he doesn’t want
anything horrible to happen to him. “Are you hungry?”

“Pardon?” the witch says.

“I’m not allowed to get snacks
after supper, but I don’t think that applies if there is a guest
here,” Robert says, and he is quite proud in declaring the witch a
guest, since he is pretty sure it means she can’t do all the
terribly evil witchy things he is trying very hard not to think
about.

The witch just nods and Robert gets out
of bed and puts his robe on, padding into the kitchen as quietly as
he can. The witch is far quieter behind him, her steps slow and
uncertain, and Robert gets fries from the fridge to put in the
microwave along with gravy from a can he can heat as well after he
turns on the kitchen lights.

“We don’t have cheese curds,” he
says, “but it is still poutine.”

“Oh. I see,” the witch says, and
she sounds as if she is trying not to laugh.

Robert bites into his lower lip. The
kitchen is brighter than the bedroom and the witch is staring at him
and it feels too much like some of the kids at school.

“Is something wrong?” the witch
asks, suddenly soft.

“You’re laughing at me.”

“I’m not,” the witch says, and
presses a hand to her heart. “I cross my heart.”

“Well, I would if it was here,”
the witch says after a short pause. “Why do you think I am here,
boy?”

“Witches steal dreams,” Robert
says. “But I don’t have any you’d want to steal so you’d be
really hungry. Poutine is good for that.”

“You don’t have dreams I’d want
to steal?” the witch says, and she looks sad at that.

“No,” Robert says warily.

“Then why would I be laughing at
you?”

“Because I’m fat,” Robert says,
and it is late and dark and cold, and he doesn’t hide from himself
in front of a witch. “Mom and Dad say I can’t diet until I’m
older because it’s not safe, but other kids in school are making
fun of me.”

“You’re not that fat,” the witch
says. “If you were,” she adds, “I would probably lure you to a
cottage and eat you, now wouldn’t I?”

“Oh!” Robert blinks at that, and
gets the fries and gravy, handing the witch a plate and eating his
own to cover his shock. Mom and Dad had told him it was just the
other kids being cruel and he would grow into his body, but it
sounded more real coming from a witch than it did from him.

He hears his moms voice then from her
bedroom, as if thinking hard about them had somehow woke her up.
“Robert?”

The witch goes still, setting down her
fork, and her smile is a strange thing: not cruel but wounded, though
Robert isn’t quite sure why he thinks that or what it means at all.

The witch is gone, faster than Robert
can move, out of the kitchen and through the back door, the wind
slamming it shut behind her in a blur of shadows. If she has a
familiar, he doesn’t see it follow her.

“What are you doing?” his mom
demands as she comes into the kitchen.

“I got a witch to not eat your dreams
by feeding her poutine,” Robert says, but his mom just tells him
it’s two in the morning in the tone of voice of an adult who will
not listen at all and bustles him back to bed with a lecture about no
treats for a week if he ever does that again.

And Robert gets into his bed, sets his
ipad aside as his mother closes the window and tsks about letting all
the warm air in the house out and he falls asleep as she leaves,
dreaming about other meals he could trap a witch with and wondering
if anyone will ever believe him at all.

A collection of miscellany

Condoms will break, but I can assure you that vows of abstinence will break more easily than condoms.

- Dr. Joycelyn Elders

In fantasy, impossible things exist. In science fiction, impossible things exist and can be understood by humans. In supernatural horror, impossible things exist and cannot live in peace with humans.

- Will Shetterly

We are living in a time when you can believe anything, as long as you do not claim it to be true.

- Ravi Zacharia

Religion teaches the dangerous nonsense that death is not the end.

- Richard Dawkins

In the time of harmony the golden age is not in the past, it is in the future

- Paul Signac

"No" is the wildest word in the English language.

- Emily Dickinson

The middle ground between genuinely true and outright faking is unconscious delusion.

- Dean Radin

“You have to surrender to your mediocrity, and just write. Because it’s hard, really hard, to write even a crappy book. But it’s better to write a book that kind of sucks rather than no book at all, as you wait around to magically become Faulkner. No one is going to write your book for you and you can’t write anybody’s book but your own.”